Eskom is the primary supplier for South African’s of power. As many as ten years ago, Eskom was warned that they’d have problems in 2007 and beyond if they didn’t increase capacity.
They didn’t listen, and we now have a daily occurence which has been named Load Shedding.
What Load Shedding means is that Eskom don’t have enough power to supply the entire South Africa (and the neighbouring country’s we were supplying power to) - so they cut off the power to specific areas on a roster basis - this has meant in the middle of the day, suddenly your power goes off for a few hours!
Unfortunately, if you think this is impossible, think again…
Load Shedding is currently affecting all South African’s and is starting to affect the South African economy in a huge way - in late January, Eskom stopped power to the metal mines (the guys that produce the gold and platinum in SA and which accounts for a fair amount of our GDP)
The gold and platinum mines apparently take up 20% of the power consumption in South Africa.
Load shedding was reduced slightly, but now the mines aren’t producing - predictions are that South African’s GDP growth will fall from 6% predictions in 2008 to 3% or less.
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1 Eric says » SEO Course // Jan 30, 2008 at 8:17 am
[...] took some time off yesterday morning from debating the Eskom Load Shedding to hang out at the Quirk eMarketing breakfast, where Rob Stokes was speaking about Search. I was [...]
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